Where Chicago-area diners can taste Africa

Monica Eng and Charles Leroux, Tribune staff reportersCHICAGO TRIBUNE

"We've seen the era of Asian food," Sisay Abebe said. "We've seen the era of Mediterranean food. Now is the time for African food."

Abebe is a part of that new era. His African Harambee restaurant in Rogers Park is among the recently opened venues for the cuisines of that vast continent -- sometimes spicy, often colorful dishes with common themes. There's a focus on starches -- some form of rice, yam, potato or bread accompanies or is the basis of almost every meal. Spices and herbs such as nutmeg, coriander seed, cardamom, and dried hot red peppers show up in

differing concentrations across the continent; and, as with any cultures forced to eat on the cheap, there's an emphasis on vegetables with mature and sometimes preserved meat acting as a flavoring.

The rise in African restaurants in Chicago and at least one suburb is largely due to a growing African immigrant population and increased curiosity among non-African diners.

"More and more people are out experimenting with different dishes," said Abebe, whose restaurant serves dishes from a variety of African nations. "And I find more and more people have developed a taste for spicy food and spices in general. In my opinion, in the next 10 years we will be seeing more African foods -- even African fast foods in America."

Opened a few months ago, African Harambee is a great introduction to African cuisines. The word "harambee" in Swahili means "a call for unity." The usage was popularized by the late leader of Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta, and addresses the diversity within unity that the restaurant espouses. Its menu notes that African Harambee serves dishes "from Casa Blanca to Cape Town. From the land of Sheba to the Ashanti Kingdom."

Born in Ethiopia, Abebe, 49, went to high school in Kenya, then college in London, where he majored in applied agriculture. "I used to feed animals," he said, "and now I feed people."

He immigrated to the U.S. in 1988 and worked as a salesman and a mortgage broker. In 1996, he opened Ethiopian Diamond restaurant on Broadway. Earlier this year, he sold his share, and, in July, opened African Harambee, a dining concept he had been considering for years. "My African friends always told me, 'We need an African place where we can have African food.'" Abebe said.

Abebe found culinary inspiration from an unlikely source: The 1970 Africa volume of the Time-Life Books series, "Foods of the World."

After reading the chapter on his native Ethiopian cuisine, Abebe decided the American-published book was pretty solid and made it his culinary guide. The book provided the recipes for many of the African dishes that come out of his kitchen, including a Mozambiquan coconut rice and a fish and shrimp stew. He also found a recipe for a South African meat and dried fruit curry. The menu also includes Ethiopian, Kenyan and West African dishes. He's considering an even broader array of food from the continent in the future, but for now just hopes to offer a welcoming atmosphere in which to educate American diners about African food.

His clientele include both newbies and those long familiar with the cuisine. He has served everyone from former Peace Corps volunteers nostalgic for African food to the Tanzanian ambassador.

"When people come in and order ugali [a cornmeal-based cooked dough]," he said, "I can tell by the way they roll it in their hands and make a little dimple in it that they have spent time in Africa."

Still, Abebe has noticed that some non-African guests are uncomfortable with communal dining and hand-eaten dishes, so he serves individual portions on composed plates with forks and knives to most customers.

Although Africa Harambee (located in the former fish restaurant, My Place For, and seemingly the new home of its nautical-themed chairs) is still getting its sea legs, Abebe sees a bright future for African food in Chicago.So far, there are no restaurants in the Chicago area representing nations in the interior of Africa. But tastes of some of the continent's other countries can be found in the area. Here are five of the most recently opened.

Pan African cuisine

African Harambee

7537 N. Clark St.,773-764-2200

Decorated with African art on the walls, humming with African tunes and featuring maps of Africa at every table, the theme here is unmistakable. Host Sisay Abebe is a helpful guide through the broad range of accessible African dishes. Diners can enjoy dishes from traditional Kenyan Sukuma Wiki (a vegetable stew whose name means "pushing the week") and West African peanut stews to Ethiopian lentils with injera, Mozambiquan fish and South African curries. Although the decor is very African, the setup is very Western with individual composed plates, forks and knives.

Girmai Lemma and his wife, Tigist Reda, opened this large, two-room restaurant in November at the corner of Lawrence and Broadway. Western-style tables along with traditional wicker Ethiopian round two-tops fill each room. "The market is growing for Ethiopian restaurants," Lemma said. First-time visitors might get a fork, but Lemma stressed that "this is a spoonless and forkless restaurant."

Reda's cooking draws on traditional recipes from her native Ethiopia, including a fiery and sweet beef wat (stew), spongy, tangy injera (bread) and crisp, cool salads. They offer a full selection of alcohol along with Ethiopian beer. But on wintry nights we prefer the clove tea. If you are lucky, you'll arrive on a weekend evening when they perform an elaborate Ethiopian coffee ceremony involving roasting and grinding beans then brewing them in a tilted jug.

Things to try: The vegetarian or meat samplers. Don't miss the fiery beef wat and the mild split pea alicha.

Kenyan, Ugandan and Tanzanian cuisine

Masala Yangu

43 E. Jefferson Ave., Naperville

630-922-9999, www.masalayangu.com

Tucked in the back corner of a historic Naperville mansion, this attractive, upscale restaurant is a surprising find in DuPage County. Calvin and Rahila Young -- he in the front of the house and she in the kitchen -- have created a welcoming environment with white and terra cotta walls in a Colonial-style double dining room with African paintings and stenciling on the walls. The menu, emphasizing foods from Swahili-speaking nations, features meat stews and vegetable entrees eaten with rice and chapati (tortilla-like flatbread) and spicing that won't jar delicate palates.

Meals can start with deep-fried meat and vegetable turnovers called sambusas, served with both mild and spicy sauces. Entrees include succulent grilled lamb chops with collard greens, chicken curry, and spiced beef cubes. A vegetable sampler features a warm sweet-and-sour cabbage, stewed kidney beans, creamed spinach and a blend of eggplant with potato.

The attractive awning on this 4-month-old Algerian restaurant doesn't prepare you for the bare-bones decor (about eight plain tables and a couple of North African paintings under fluorescent lights) and meager bill of fare. Host and cook Omar Aitelhadjomar plans to expand the current couscous and meat offerings with a tagine (stew) of the day and North African salad -- cucumbers, tomatoes and tahini sauce. The beef kebab over excellent couscous was a little dry, but the lamb shank arrived meltingly tender. Unlike other Algerian spots around town serving French colonial-inspired crepes, Aitelhadjomar wants Couscous House to offer a taste of Algerian home cooking.

Things to try: Lamb shank and couscous.

Senegalese cuisine

Yassa

716 E. 79th St.

773-488-5599, yassaafricanrestaurant.com

One of two Senegalese restaurants in the Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood (the other is Sunugal), Yassa has become a foodie favorite, despite sometimes frustrating service. Wood paneling and Afrocentric art line the two rooms of this homey spot. Most entrees feature a meat (chicken, lamb, fish, beef) and a sauce. For instance, there's a terrific lemon-marinated and grilled chicken called Yassa chicken that comes in a tomato, pepper and onion sauce. Another standout is maffe, which features beef in a creamy peanut butter and tomato sauce.

Things to try: The crispy-skinned Yassa chicken and the rich nutty maffe.